Embassies unstaffed, military gaps: America's toxic politics spills into foreign affairs

A jarring split-screen reality will come into focus this week, highlighting grand American ambitions internationally amid political dysfunction back home.

As the U.S. and China compete for influence, two cabinet members are making yet another trip to the Indo-Pacific, a region with vital naval hubs and shipping lanes: it's the 12th and eighth trip there for the secretaries of state and defence.

Meanwhile, at home, the U.S.'s notoriously bitter domestic politics is spilling into international issues in novel ways — with battles over abortion and LGBTQ issues stalling everything from U.S. military hiring and promotions, to diplomatic appointments and a new military budget.

After the Supreme Court limited abortion access last summer, the military started funding leaves to allow personnel to have the procedures in pro-choice states.

This prompted Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama to start systematically blocking Senate military confirmations.

It's the same in U.S. diplomacy: Nearly three dozen countries lack U.S. ambassadors due to a blockade in the Senate, where Republican Rand Paul wants more information on the origins of COVID-19.

As well, an updated military budget has been paused over the above-mentioned abortion issue, as well as diversity initiatives and gender-affirming care, which Republicans want removed from the Pentagon budget.

U.S. allies vent frustrations

Aside from all this, U.S. President Joe Biden recently had to cancel what would have been a historic first trip to a Pacific island nation at the centre of the U.S.-China power struggle; he was back in Washington amid a Congressional crisis over the debt ceiling.

One Pacific ally was in Washington last week recounting his past frustrations dealing with the U.S. political system, saying it creates doubts among America's friends.

Surangel Whipps, the president of Palau, noted that it took eight years for Congress to confirm permanent funding for a security and economic pact between the two countries as Democrats and Republicans grappled with other issues.

Whipps told a Washington audience at a Foundation for Defense of Democracies gathering that Palau is a model U.S. ally — it's blocked plans for a Chinese casino next to a U.S. radar site, and it wants to rip up and replace the country's Huawei cellular infrastructure.

But with the U.S.-Palau pact again up for renewal, Whipps said he hoped to avoid a repeat of last time.

"If the relationship is that important, you have to show it," he told the audience, noting that allies don't want to see the U.S. so caught up in internal politics that it ignores international responsibilities.  

"Because I think that's what our people at home kind of fear sometimes — you know, we see how divided [Capitol] Hill is." 

Political polarization isn't all bad. Robust debate can reduce the risk of groupthink and related errors, and is part of what makes democracies resilient.

Generations ago, political scientists complained about the opposite problem: that U.S. political parties were too similar and they agreed too much.

But several scholars who study the interplay between domestic and foreign politics say the U.S. has swung way beyond the healthy level.

"I think it is a big problem," said Jordan Tama, who specializes in domestic politics and foreign policy at American University.

"We are shooting ourselves in the foot — not putting in place key national-security officials … It's troubling."

Foreign policy at loggerheads is nothing new

Another type of polarization involves substantive disagreements on foreign affairs that see the U.S. zigzagging on certain policies from one administration to the next.

The Paris climate accord, the Iran nuclear deal and the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact, for example, were all policies adopted under Barack Obama and cancelled under Donald Trump. In some cases, they're now being renewed under Biden.

One scholar of international relations joked that this is the reason Secretary of State Antony Blinken has made 12 trips to the Indo-Pacific — and probably needs to do 12 more.

Peter Trubowitz said the world is dizzy from trying to follow these U.S. foreign policy zigzags and figure out whether the country's current positions will survive the next election.

"America's allies need to be reassured," said Trubowitz, an American and director of the U.S.-focused Phelan Centre at the London School of Economics.

"One of the reasons they need to be reassured is because the United States is so deeply polarized."

At Clemson University in South Carolina, political scientist Jeffrey Peake has tried charting one reason this matters: a collapse in frequency of U.S. international treaties.

Between the Second World War and the presidency of George W. Bush, Peake counts an average of 16 treaties per year submitted for approval by the U.S. Senate. That dropped to four per year under Obama. 

During the last two presidencies, it's eroded to one a year.

Because it's gotten harder to pass a treaty through Congress, Peake says presidents just sign agreements that aren't entrenched in law, making it easy for a successor to simply cancel them. As Trump did, for example, with the climate accord.

Global implications

These types of actions have major global implications, according to Peake. "The world doesn't really address climate change without the U.S. on board." 

And bitter disagreements about international affairs aren't new. In one famous example from 1919, the U.S. Senate rejected Woodrow Wilson's plan for the precursor to the United Nations; the idea lay dormant for another three decades, through another world war.

The Senate later rejected the UN's genocide convention for four decades, arms-control treaties and various climate accords. The chamber has also often blocked appointments over disputes.

But Peake says what's happening in Washington right now is not a foreign policy disagreement — it's about foreign policy becoming hostage to domestic disputes. 

And it's triggered separate blockades of senior military and senior diplomatic confirmations.

"This is not something you see typically in U.S. history," Peake said, noting that in normal times, Alabama voters would punish Tuberville for blocking the confirmations.

Instead, because the U.S. is so polarized, they're more likely to reward him for standing up to Democrats.

The benefits of messy debate

There are many examples throughout U.S. history where a little more argument might have helped matters.

In 2003, for example, there was little opposition to the Iraq war in Congress. Or McCarthyism and the Red Scare of the 1950s, abetted by bipartisan groupthink.

The catastrophic war in Vietnam is another example. In 1964, after only 40 minutes of debate, Congress voted to increase its military involvement in Vietnam — the vote was 416-0 in the House of Representatives and 88-2 in the Senate.

"Bipartisanship is not a cure-all," Trubowitz said. "Too much of anything can be a bad thing."

Jim Carafano, a national-security analyst who served on Donald Trump's presidential transition team and has a long military and history background, said the unfilled positions are not ideal.

"It is problematic," Carafano said of the military vacancies, which he says create inconveniences and planning problems, but he doesn't think they're debilitating. Besides, he says there's no example of an urgent foreign crisis where the U.S. was prevented from acting.

"Is it hamstringing the [American] giant, you know, tying us down like Gulliver with the Lilliputians? I don't see that."

His bottom-line view: democracy is resilient.

The current logjams, Carafano says, will eventually clear, voting coalitions will eventually undergo one of their transformative realignments and the parties will look different.

It's a view as old as American history.

When he visited the U.S. at the dawn of the republic, French writer Alexis de Tocqueville remarked that autocratic rule looks stable — until it isn't. Democracy, he wrote, looks messy but it's sturdy.

Then again, he also wrote that democracies are bad at handling foreign affairs.

Now, the U.S., the world's self-described oldest democracy, seems determined to test both theories at once, confronting great foreign challenges while there's so much squabbling in the household.